Category: Islam and the West

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Statistical Islam

Read this while it is still possible and legal to do so. Then we can talk. I have read a lot about Islam, and this has the ring of truth about it.

For example:

Another dualistic aspect of Islam is its ethics. Oneof the chief features of Islam is the doctrine of the kafir. It treats them dreadfully and horribly. No one would ever want to be treated as a kafir is treated in the Trilogy. This leads us to the Golden Rule. There is no Golden Rule in Islam because of the division of humanity into believer and kafir. The Golden Rule is to treat ALL people as you would be treated. Since no one wants be treated like a kafir, and the kafir is so central to Islamic doctrine, it proves that Islam has no Golden Rule. Islam has one set of rules for Muslims and another set of rules for kafirs. This is dualistic ethics.

I think there is a close parallel between the time it took to understand Communism in North America and the time it is taking to understand Islam. Mostly the incomprehension takes the form of: “They don’t seriously believe that!, They can’t you’re just making it up”. It took a while for people to realize what Communism was. After World War II, anti-communist refugees from Eastern Europe were treated in polite society as fanatics, trouble-makers, fascists, and maybe some of them were. But the reality of Communism eventually made itself manifest, despite the fellow-travelers, the official and underground Communist parties, the infiltration of the organs of state, the agents of influence, and the progressives, and the bland assumption of the elites that only the rednecks needed to be worried about.

The same process is underway now and here. It will take time and it will involve almost surely “McCarthyism”, which is just a leftist term for the populist reaction against the Communist infiltration of the organs of government that was then going on. The Islamic infiltration is underway, and will be rooted out in twenty or thirty years.

Islam is not a religion; it is essentially a totalitarian political ideology that incidentally talks a lot about God.

Anyone care to disagree?

Is this an accurate description of what is happening? Is it exaggerated? Is it understated? The article is worth paying attention to. Many more people think this way than speak this way publicly.

 

The tide has turned. Islam is winning the intellectual jihad. It has now smelled blood. Western civilization and its governing principles are on the run – thanks in large part to the Left, which spent decades preparing the groundwork for thought control by persuading lawmakers that there exists a fundamental right ‘not to be offended’ and that the test of ‘offensive’ language resides in the subjective judgment of the identity group that chooses to take offence. Contemporary discourse is now about how people feel rather than what they think. The content of speech is now less important than the imputed motive or emotion embedded in it. If it is deemed hateful or insulting then it should be proscribed. End of story. How convenient for orthodoxy.

About Quebec: More hysterical vapouring

The national press is in full-throated rant about Quebec’s policy against overt religious coverings, symbols and trinkets being worn by state employees.

The Globe asserts:

A government that posts sketches of impermissible religious dress in the public-sector workplace, as the Parti Québécois did on Tuesday, has cut itself off from its province’s roots of tolerance and freedom of conscience, and Canada’s. And once it has done so, how far will it go?

Farther, is my guess. When the last Protestant in Quebec graveyard is bulldozed, or finally abandoned to weeds, then the Parti Quebecois will breathe a sigh of relief. It is the path they have been on for forty years and they are not stopping now.

The National Post’s Jonathan Kay gets to the point about face-coverings, and I agree with him, as I am sure all readers would:

It is only a tiny slice of Canadian Muslims who support the wearing of the niqab: Most of this country’s Islamic community, no doubt, finds face-covering as alienating as the rest of us. Yet Ms. Marois’ legislation shows how the minority of Muslims who don the niqab is threatening religious freedom for everyone else: Because it is unseemly to crack down on just one religious or cultural tradition, the anti-niqab backlash in Quebec has taken the form of incipient legislation that targets all religious communities. If the niqab, then the turban. If the turban, then the Star of David. If the Star of David, then the Christian Cross. And if the Christian Cross, well then, even non-face-covering Muslim headscarves are outré, as well.

Michael Den Tandt cannot restrain his revulsion:

The contradictions, inconsistencies, stupidity and injustice in all this are too glaring for any fair-minded person to overlook. So is the massive unwarranted incursion by the state into the private choices of individuals. The PQ, in a bid for a galvanizing cause, has resorted to demagoguery, beneath which simmers barely concealed bigotry. This may be the battle Marois wanted: That no longer matters. The “Charter of Quebec Values” is an abomination. Quebecers and all Canadians should say so, come what may.

No, sir. Reaction should be proportionate to the offence. Quebec is ruling in a sensitive issue, yes. But think for a moment.

  • The state tells women to cover themselves decently, from breasts to thighs. Men cannot go around naked. The state does regulate dress.
  • It has a right to enforce dress codes for its public servants more particular or stringent than general provisions for decency.

Of course the Parti Quebecois is creating a cynical wedge issue, and I am reasonably sure they will win on this, electorally, and in surprizingly large majorities.

Is the proposed legislation over-broad? Yes. Will it lead to vexatious enforcement by vexing enforcers? Yes. Is it constitutional? Probably not, but not so unconstitutional as to be thrown out entirely, and the Supremes may well tailor the code to suit their own ideas while affirming the principle of the government’s right to determine dress codes for employees.

And most important, will English Canada’s overblown reaction do any good? No. It will harden Quebec attitudes, but that is less important than this fact: it will make more difficult the social regulation of Islam, which is not far off in English Canada too.

Everyone take a valium.

Addendum: Parti Quebecois support now at 40% among French Quebecers, according to polls conducted for the Globe.

 

So why are intervening to help Sunni Islam against Shi’a Islam?

Because Sunni regimes have offered to pay for our invasion of Syria?

I am not making this up! What are we? Mercenaries for Islam?

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily.

“With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry said. “They have. That offer is on the table.”

Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

 

Message for Andrew Coyne

Andrew Coyne is one of the bright moral lights of Canadian journalism: hard-working, articulate, intelligent, principled, brave and frequently wrong, though I never mind his being wrong, because he never assumes his view is the only one possible, unlike another Globe and Mail pundit, whose pomposity is legendary.

However, Andrew comes close to complete folly this weekend, arguing that because we know that Assad is doing bad things and “because we have at least a fighting chance to stop it.”

No we do not. If we overthrow Assad, which cannot be done at any reasonable military cost (to us), we have in fact bought Syria, and once we own it, we have to figure out how the Sunnis can be prevented from massive ethnic cleansings and exterminations of Alawites, Christians, Shi’ites, Kurds and Druze. How many hundred thousand troops will this take? Will the expeditionary forces of the West have brief rest between our brilliant exploits in Afghanistan and Iraq before reforming another Islamic country?

The question answers itself. Let them kill each other into stalemate. Let the Sunni Arab powers put some skin into the game, instead of running to Uncle Sam to solve their political problems with Iran.

Then we have to figure out how to disguise this fact from ourselves. How will our political leaders defend bringing Al-Qaeda supporters into power?

When in doubt, do nothing. Stop digging a bigger hole for ourselves. Stop wasting treasure and precious lives on futile causes.

 

Hussein’s Folly

The current Democrat administration in Washington seems about to embark on the next ill-advised intervention in a brutal civil war in the Middle East.

After two and a half years of fighting, over 100,000 deaths, a quarter of a million injured and nearly 2 million refugees, suddenly the tragic deaths of 300 people, apparently from sarin nerve agent, has produced a storm of “moral indignation” requiring that the Western nations launch a military attack on the Assad regime.

Whether or not the regime carried out the attack, or al-Qaeda or some other group of rebels, is still in doubt. That said, the “moral indignation” is so much moralizing humbug.

Back in the Cold War days, chemical weapons were classed as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) mainly because any country attacked with them could respond with another WMD, possibly nuclear. Chemical weapons were labelled the “poor man’s nuclear bomb” because they can be highly effective against unprotected populations, either military or civilian.

Chemical weapons were used extensively in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s by both sides and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties. The rest of the world did “stand idly by” then because, quite simply, that was all that could be done.

Any military operation must have a clear objective in strategy and a detailed tactical plan for achieving that objective. The military requires solid decision making from the political leadership and an assurance of continued support during military action. Ask any military man or woman.

President Obama can supply none of these things. He is a feckless leader who has consistently shown his lack of understanding of the political situation. He has made threats that he has had no intention of following up on (“red lines”) and has supported, in Egypt at least, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is devoted to establishing an Islamic tyranny. He has failed on all occasions to even protest about the persecution of Christians by Muslims in the Middle East and, at the infamous Cairo University speech, shown his ignorance of history.

Leadership flows from force, power and strength, never from weakness. And “leading from behind” tells the rest of the world that weakness leads America.

He has thus rendered American foreign policy in this part of the world nugatory.

Poking a stick in the eye of one partner in a fight between two warring thugs and then running away after a day, which is what the Administration appears to be saying, will impress no-one, except of course, the President, who seems endlessly impressed with himself. No doubt his sycophants in the liberal media will grovel in faux admiration.

And suppose that this attack does not deter the use of chemical weapons? What then? What if Hezbollah decides to attack Israel in revenge? Where does that leave the Americans?

Prime Minister Cameron in Britain said recently that the response should be “legal and proportionate”, or words to that effect. Here again, we see a total lack of understanding of the mind-set of the people they are up against. They are fanatics who are willing to fight and die. Unless you are prepared to do all that is required and use overwhelming force to crush your opponent, your opponent will win.

Military force should never be used unless there is an absolute commitment to follow through. This is not a board game of “Risk” or “Diplomacy”, the lives of our military are at stake. Further, telling the enemy when you will go home is the height of foolishness.

America and the world deserve better leadership than this.

Have a Nice Day,
Rebel Yell

What stake do we have in a Sunni victory against Assad?

The Syrian civil war is a three-way  struggle between Sunni jihadists, Sunni secularists, and Iranian Shia-backed Alawites, who constitute the government. Of the opposition to Assad, the greater part is jihadist. Alawites are about 11% of the Syrian population: like the Afrikaners, they may run a brutal dictatorship but they represent very little threat to their neighbours because they are atop an unstable pyramid. Alawites are heretical to Sunni Islam, and when the rebellion against Assad began, the Sunni protesters shouted the slogan:

“Alawites to the grave, Christians to Beirut!”

I suggest that Sunni goals remain the same after three years of brutal civil war.

Wikipedia informs us that:

“Syria’s population is 74% Sunni Muslim, Other Muslims (including Alawites and Druze) make up 16% of the population, Various Christian denominations make up 10%.”

Syria’s population is about 23 million.

So now Obama wants to bomb Syrian government chemical weapons factories, to prevent their future use. After this spanking, Assad will continue as before.

Do we have any significant interest in overthrowing Assad?

No, we do not.

The Middle-East is composed of Muslims, not liberal democrats. When the “people” come to power , as in Egypt recently, the “people” rapidly morph into a plebiscitary dictatorship, as Morsi’s Egypt was becoming, or had become. Only monarchies and armies provide stability and protection for religious minorities: viz Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey before the populist Erdogan took over.

We have a strategic interest in stable, repressive dictatorships or, better yet, enlightened monarchies, in Islamic countries. We do not have an interest in populist revolutions (Iran, Egypt) of any kind in the Arab Middle East. In case you are wondering, 4,000 civilians have been killed so far this year in Iraq’s Sunni-Shia struggles, and a mere 10,000 wounded.

How’s that hopey changey stuff workin’ for ya?

 

The obduracy of the leftist project

I started this posting on the inability of the Left to learn anything, but it ended up where it needed to go. Bear with me.

This delicious quote comes from Jason Richwine, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, fired for saying true things about IQ differentials between whites and Hispanics:

“For people who have studied mental ability, what’s truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm [about IQ differentials] like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.”

At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help.

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor(referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes.

You can read the vilification he has to endure from half-educated leftist twits like Ana Marie Cox of the Guardian here.

Now the question asks itself: why does there exist in the media – which is a stand-in for the leftist project itself – a wholly different attitude towards “consensus” on man-caused climate change (drastic, large and exclusively human-caused), and consensus in the cognitive sciences on IQ measurements (bad science, racist, disputed).

Well obviously it suits the interests of some people to believe that a vastly expanded state control of everything can and should solve the sin of carbon emissions, and that humans are sufficiently plastic (malleable) that vastly expanded state activities can equalize the condition of man regardless of the (non-existent) biologically-based differences in their intelligences.

The leftist project is acutely uncomfortable with the notion that there is a biological basis for any significant aspect of human existence, particularly if these differences reinforce existing hierarchies or the possibility of permanent  inequalities or different outcomes. You know the drill: racist, sexist, classist, phallocentric, Eurocentric, differentist, and so forth.

The second outstanding feature of Richwine’s comments was to note the obduracy of the media position: no amount of factual research can influence their views on IQ (that people are all equal in all respects, and if they are not, it should not be discussed) , and that man is the exclusive cause of climate change, denial of which is heresy.

The wise political campaign that offends these principles has to take a very cautious and clever line to slip past the guardians of political correctness. I recall that during the 1984 presidential campaign, Reagan’s forces launched one of the best political ads ever. It showed a bear shambling on a ridge, backlit by the sky. The bear was only doing what bears do, snuffling the ground for grubs and nibbling on a bush. The bear was obviously a stand-in for the Russian military, which had been built up through the Brezhnev years until over 40% of the USSR’s GDP was being spent on the military. The voice-over in the ad simply asked the question: if there existed a bear, would you not want to be able to defend yourself against it. The last line of the voice-over asked, after a pause: “if there is a bear?”.

Today it seems incredible that a US political campaign would have to soft-peddle the notion that the USSR had built up an enormous military, ultimately bankrupting itself in the process. The politically correct forces of the time, however, had different ideas. Pointing out the obvious size and menace of the USSR was “McCarthyism”, “fear-mongering”, and signs of delusional thinking.

So how would a political campaign ask about how to deal with Islam?

Picture an ad showing throngs of Muslims screaming in streets, shouting anti-US or anti-Christian slogans, burning embassies, preaching hate on televisions, beheading and stoning adulterers, converts, apostates, and blocking streets in European cities with praying men, butts in the air.

The voice-over comes on:

“Imagine there is a religion which believes it is the duty of every one of its adherents to kill, enslave and degrade anyone not belonging to it.

“Imagine there is a religion whose adherents believe in removing the clitorises of young girls to secure their sexual constancy and obedience to their husbands.

“Imagine there is a religion which takes as its divinely-ordained human model a man who married his twelve year old niece, disavowed his adopted nephew to do so, slaughtered thousands of prisoners of war, and who made his lusts the criterion and authoritative guide of all male behaviour for all time?

“Imagine a religion which says its primary texts are not just divinely inspired, but are the dictations of God to man, literally and fully authoritative, even though one fifth of it cannot be logically or grammatically deciphered, even it its original language?”

“Imagine a religion that considers all inquiry, of whatever kind, to be formally forbidden”

“Imagine a religion that believes that if God says two plus two makes five, then there is no human basis for disputing that absurdity, and that to do so would merit death?

“Imagine a religion which says that the match does not light the gasoline, but that all physical events happen directly and without intermediation or operation of physical laws, but by the will of God alone?”

“Imagine if there were  a religion which says that everything that happens in the universe: every molecule jiggling, every event that happen to a human, every bird falling from the sky, happens by the will of God alone?”

“Imagine the effects on scientific education and rational inquiry, when all possible subjects of inquiry: religious, philosophical or scientific, are forbidden.

“Would you not want to defend yourself against this religion? Would you not seek to have it disputed in public places by people in authority?

“If there were such a religion?”

I can see the hate-crime prosecutions now, but I can see the ad very clearly, and so do many of you, dear readers, without the benefit of televisions or computers. It is running every day, just the voice-over is missing. And now you have one.

 

What Islam will do to you

The left and Islam learn the meaning of the term blowback.

After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and launched into a rant against what he called “the enemy” — the country’s Muslim minority.

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims.

“I call them troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,” Ashin Wirathu told a reporter after his two-hour sermon. “I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.”

Distinguishing between moderate and radical Islam

One always hears from the Muslim apologist, that one has to differentiate between Muslim and Islam. Presumably this similar to the task of identifying the differences between say, Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist etc. But what do you do you when mainstream Muslims are like this? Kindly note that this a preacher who is a regular guest on TV shows in his country.

A Saudi preacher who raped his five-year-old daughter and tortured her to death has been sentenced to pay “blood money” to the mother after having served a short jail term, activists said on Saturday.

Lama Al Ghamdi was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said. She died last October 22.

Fayhan Al Gamdi, an Islamic preacher and regular guest on Muslim television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, the activists from the group “Women to Drive” said in a statement.

They said the father had doubted Lama’s virginity and had her checked up by a medic.

Randa Al Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl’s back was broken and that she had been raped “everywhere”, according to the group.

According to the victim’s mother, hospital staff told her that her “child’s rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed.”

Let us understand some facts here. Is a 5-year old really culpable for losing her virginity? Is the proper recourse to rape her “everywhere” and then try to seal a rectum, that had been torn open, by burning it close?

And to think that a 2004 report in Ontario recommended that Sharia be implemented in the province. At least McGuinty did one thing right by rejecting the recommendation.